A Long Time Ago...

My first apartment when I got back from the army was the upstairs of an old brick house on West Washington Street in Fort Wayne. I was living on the GI bill which was inadequate, of course, so I had a part time job, too…still, very frugal I was. I ran into this kid who was selling Kirby sweepers for a living and we were inquiring about the same place…it was a different time…we just decided to share the rent so we wouldn’t have to live under a bridge…then I talked an old high school buddy into moving in, too…ah! My rent then was a manageable $41.66 a month!
This salesman was an 18 year old kid who had friends who were some kind of weed dealers. I came home one day and he had his friends there, and they were cleaning a big duffel bag of weed! I told him later, calmly, I didn’t care if he smoked it …whatever…but he just couldn’t use the apartment as a clearing house for enough weed to send us all to the pen !
Anyway, when they left that day this kid must have swept the floor and got some seeds. We had a live flower growing in a flower pot. He must have planted the seeds there.
When they grew a little , he told us about it…I just let it go…what harm ?
One day I came home and the old lady landlord was in there snooping through our stuff!!
She had a feather dust-mop in her hand and told me she was “cleaning”. Right!
The kid’s little marijuana plants were maybe 8 inches high and I knew she had seen them.
That was it. No more of that stuff. No trouble, just paranoia for a long while. I got mono and had to move back with my folks for a month to recuperate, and I lost the apartment. The kid went into the US Air Force and hopefully away from drugs.
My buddy got married and lives in a farm house now.
And I had two marriages, a daughter, a career, and now I walk dogs and blog all day.